2014-12-31

8.25: news.pol/free speech/the terrorists own us:8.25: summary:
. by targeting of journalists for harassment,
police have assaulted a pillar of democracy.
. it is assumed that "civil disobedience" is non-violent;
and it's debated why the police so often
resort to violence in response to that;
I would tend to give the police the benefit of the doubt,
but lately they are getting violent on journalism,
leading one to suspect that there is
something pathological about policing
or the personalities selected to do policing,
or the drugs or steroids that support police .
. good day when robots do the policing .
12.31:
. but what if the police felt the journalists
were part of a conspiracy with protestors
who were doing things to provoke the police
in order to film more police violence ?
. what was really interesting about this police action
is that it had Obama defending journalists
only to have journalists lash back at Obama
over his war-time treatment of journalism .credoaction.com:

Law enforcement officials on the streets of Ferguson
and along the corridors of power in Washington,
by targeting of journalists for harassment,
have assaulted a pillar of democracy.

On the ground in Ferguson,
local police have repeatedly intimidated journalists,
creating unreasonable and unconscionable barriers to
reporting that tells the story of broader assaults on
the civil rights and civil liberties of protesters.
. reporters from the Washington Post and Huffington Post
were shockingly roughed up and arrested by police;
police shot tear gas canisters at a camera crew,
and when the media personnel were forced to flee
police shockingly dismantled their camera and lights
-- creating a glaring example of a police agency
literally shutting down public scrutiny.
At least 11 U.S. and foreign journalists have been arrested,
while dozens have complained of intimidation by the police.

Even President Obama had to address the clearly unacceptable
physical assaults on journalists in Ferguson
saying: “Here in the United States of America,
police should not be bullying or arresting journalists
who are just trying to do their jobs.”
[yet] President Obama's administration
has invoked the Espionage Act against whistleblowers
more times than all previous presidents combined;
[8.25: 12.31:
. well, Obama is working during the climax of
the War on Terror, 2008..2016;
after that WWIII will install the New World Order
(or perhaps Russia-China's Eastern World Order)
and then we could end state secrecy,
because there will be no competing states to hide from .]

thenation.com 8.18:
The robust journalism that America requires has, of course,
been undermined by the constant cuts imposed by
hedge-fund media moguls.
But even where media outlets still try to tell
the stories that need to be told,
in the years since the 9/11 attacks,
they face threats from government agencies
who refuse to obey open-records requests
and federal officials who have grown increasingly aggressive
in their efforts to monitor reporters
and to try and force journalists to reveal the names of whistleblowers.
“There is an attitude shift that says it’s OK
to go after reporters to get information to use in litigation”.
[keep in mind:] freedom of the press
“is the freedom that allows us to verify
the existence of all other freedoms.”
[8.25:
. but usa is divided by a culture war
with each side happy to suppress
the media of the other side:]
"Don’t Trust Corporate Media"
vs "Don’t Trust Liberal Media" .

theguardian.com:
James Risen faces jail over his refusal to reveal a source
and testify against a former CIA agent accused of leaking secrets
(about a botched intelligence operation
that ended up spilling nuclear secrets to Iran).
The pursuit of Risen began under the administration of
President George W Bush. [and continues with Obama]
The Justice Department tried to
prosecute him under the Espionage Act
for his 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning scoop
about the illegal wiretapping of American citizens
after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
It also targeted him for the revelations in State of War.
Risen would be the first journalist since 2005
(New York Times reporter Judith Miller)
to go to prison for failing to divulge sources .